Freedom and choice - problematic?

[Norsefire]

If human civilization is to be as systematic as possible, as predictable and as controllable as can be......then freedom and choice are ultimately undesirable. First off, you might ask "what benefit is there in being predictable and controllable", although then I ask you, what benefit is there not? Through a rigid control we gain peace; we can productivity; we can organization; we gain a greater collective welfare.

The greatest problem with human freedom and choice is that it creates a potential for uncertainty, unpredictability, and inconsistency in human culture and society. If we eliminate these factors, we are able to keep the population under strict regulation, and thus maintain welfare.

It's rather like the saying "we can't have too much freedom, we need some control"..........but why some? Why not complete, utter, and total control over the individual? If diversity is left to chance and people are left to their own opinions, then hatred is bred and segregation is born. Through targeted, and strict population regulation we are able to have complete control over the demographic and thus create stability.

Of course this brings up issues; ultimately someone has to be in control, and thus more free than everyone else, and as human beings are imperfect, the system will always be flawed. Although this isn't a problem we can't get around; in the future, as more technologies become available, we will have better ability to ensure against corruption and "freethinking". For instance, we could replace Human governments with rational artificial intelligence, programmed to look after certain aspects of society.

[glaucon]

Alas, as with all flawed arguments, the error lies in your premiss:

If human civilization is to be as systematic as possible, as predictable and as controllable as can be......

In any case, how is this thread any different in content from your "Civilization has nothing to do with Freedom or Tolerance" thread??

[baftan]

The greatest problem with human freedom and choice is that it creates a potential for uncertainty, unpredictability, and inconsistency in human culture and society.

You can claim the same uncertainty, unpredictability and inconsistency in nature. The degree of freedom in natural forces allowed life to create many species (including us) and the ecosystem. It has to obey certain physical rules, but life has been free to mutate, to interact, and to make modification among its species allowing them to perform a certain degree of freedom. If life had more strict rules over its creation (let's say, more rigid DNA code, less mutation for the sake of order and longevity) we would not be here. Life rather has interacted with its environment, developed many organs to harvest environment, and species to employ these organs.

This is also true for our civilization. For the protection of what is already here we needed order and rules; but for the new opportunities and possibilities we needed individual freedom to exercise new options. You can not perform human freedom without having a certain type of order: Just as nature provides a nursery for life to evolve, our civilization (in the sense of human order) allows human agents to improve human existence. But if we eliminate human freedom for the sake of greater good (I do not know what are they, so I will accept your suggestions as example), we would not enjoy the possibilities of human minds, because we simply shut them down. If we can not sustain a free social environment for our kind, we would turn ourselves into a kind of ant colony. Since we are not ants but complex mammals, this could be against both our nature and our artificial civilization.

Throughout human history, we have defined and appreciated ourselves not because we can see, hear, sleep or eat. We define our human difference with emancipations such as how we cracked the restrictions set by nature or by ourselves: How did we control the fire, how did we start agricultural revolution, how did we achieve to send shuttles into the space, how did we abolish slavery and how did we improve our knowledge. All these things and others require free human performances within a certain type of rules and regulations. More freedom requires more sophisticated regulations; both for protection and for improvement of human freedom.

It is actually easier to control human beings than to make them control themselves. Because one thing is obvious: When you control humans, they tend to cooperate rather than resist, as long as you provide them basic things. Those who resist are actually the people who benefit less from the system. If everybody becomes happy, no one will think about how to improve things, they will just follow. If you can not satisfy them, they will start to make noises. Feed them again, they will shut up. Give them a little responsibility; they will start to complain about everything. "Nothing is going well, where is government, why is this and that wrong, blah, blah..." Nobody or no system would attempt to take the whole pressure, so it is not functional to establish a close system for humans.

Functional and effective human system should include both elements at the same time: Control and freedom, in a combined package: "controlled freedom". The challenge is to share the responsibility among agents. Everybody should defend the freedom, but everybody should know the cost of this freedom. And regime must provide an environment for free agents. The freedom itself requires constant redefinition and becomes a dynamic ingredients rather than an empty title.

We are genetically 2% different than our closest cousins, chimpanzees. It is not a great estimation to say that we are only 2% more free than chimpanzees: We are bound to millions of physical and social realities. We can not improve our humanity by decreasing the percentage of this freedom, but we can improve it by allowing more space to our share of freedom, and make it bigger than 2%.

[Baron Max]

Of course this brings up issues; ultimately someone has to be in control,...
...in the future, as more technologies become available, we will have better ability to ensure against corruption and "freethinking". For instance, we could replace Human governments with rational artificial intelligence, programmed to look after certain aspects of society.

Well, until humans come up with such a vast, all-knowing computer to control us all, we're stuck with what we have now. See?

The other thing that you have to be aware of is that different humans require different degrees of control ...some like lots of control (even tho' they'll deny it!) and some don't need any control to do the right things. How can a computer know any of that? How will the computer measure the "inner need" of external control?

I would suggest that humans are just completely fucked up and there's nothing anyone can do to fix it.

Baron Max

[D H]

If human civilization is to be as systematic as possible, as predictable and as controllable as can be......then freedom and choice are ultimately undesirable. First off, you might ask "what benefit is there in being predictable and controllable", although then I ask you, what benefit is there not? Through a rigid control we gain peace; we can productivity; we can organization; we gain a greater collective welfare.

The only answer to this premise is some form of totalitarianism. It is a flawed premise. Totalitarianism has been tried multiple times and has failed multiple times. It's one thing for a government to tell me what I can't do (e.g., it tells me not to kill, steal, commit fraud, ...). It's quite another for a government to tell me what I must do. That is incredibly undesirable.

The greatest problem with human freedom and choice is that it creates a potential for uncertainty, unpredictability, and inconsistency in human culture and society.

Uncertainty and unpredictability are amongst the benefits of freedom and choice. Where did you get the idea that they are bad attributes?

[glaucon]

No response from Norse yet.

Norse, PM me when you like, providing some sort of explanation that makes the subject of this thread clearly distinct from your other ("Civilization has nothing to do with Freedom or Tolerance").